Wittgenstein's Thought Experiments and Relativity Theory

In this paper, I discuss the similarity between Wittgenstein’s use of thought experiments and Relativity Theory. I begin with introducing Wittgenstein’s idea of “thought experiments” and a tentative classification of different kinds of thought experiments in Wittgenstein’s work. Then, after presenting a short recap of some remarks on the analogy between Wittgenstein’s point of view and Einstein’s, I suggest three analogies between the status of Wittgenstein’s mental experiments and Relativity theory: the topics of time dilation, the search for invariants, and the role of measuring tools in Special Relativity. This last point will help to better define Wittgenstein’s idea of description as the core of his philosophical enterprise

Illocutionary harm

A number of philosophers have become interested in the ways that individuals are subject to harm as the performers of illocutionary acts. This paper offers an account of the underlying structure of such harms: I argue that speakers are the subjects of illocutionary harm when there is interference in the entitlement structure of their linguistic activities. This interference comes in two forms: denial and incapacitation. In cases of denial, a speaker is prevented from achieving the outcomes to which they are entitled by their speech. In cases of incapacitation, a speaker’s standing to expect certain outcomes is itself undermined. I also discuss how individual speakers are subject to interference along two dimensions: as exercisers of certain non-linguistic capacities, and as producers of meaningful speech

Formation and persistence of glaciovolcanic voids explored with analytical and numerical models

One fifth of Earth's volcanoes are covered by snow or ice and many have active geothermal systems that interact with the overlying ice. These glaciovolcanic interactions can melt voids into glaciers, and are subject to controls exerted by ice dynamics and geothermal heat output. Glaciovolcanic voids have been observed to form prior to volcanic eruptions, which raised concerns when such features were discovered within Job Glacier on Qw̓elqw̓elústen (Mount Meager Volcanic Complex), British Columbia, Canada. In this study we model the formation, evolution, and steady-state morphology of glaciovolcanic voids using analytical and numerical models. Analytical steady-state void geometries show cave height limited to one quarter of the ice thickness, while numerical model results suggest the void height h scales with ice thickness H and geothermal heat flux $\dot {Q}$ as $h/H = a H^b \dot {Q}^c$, with exponents b = −n/2 and c = 1/2 where n is the creep exponent. Applying this scaling to the glaciovolcanic voids within Job Glacier suggests the potential for total geothermal heat flux in excess of 10 MW. Our results show that relative changes in ice thickness are more influential in glaciovolcanic void formation and evolution than relative changes in geothermal heat flux

Wittgenstein’s Thought Experiments and Relativity Theory

In this paper, I discuss the similarity between Wittgenstein’s use of thought experiments and Relativity Theory. I begin with introducing Wittgenstein’s idea of “thought experiments” and a tentative classification of different kinds of thought experiments in Wittgenstein’s work. Then, after presenting a short recap of some remarks on the analogy between Wittgenstein’s point of view and Einstein’s, I suggest three analogies between the status of Wittgenstein’s mental experiments and Relativity theory: the topics of time dilation, the search for invariants, and the role of measuring tools in Special Relativity. This last point will help to better define Wittgenstein’s idea of description as the core of his philosophical enterprise

Compositionality and Sandbag Semantics

It is a common view that radical contextualism about linguistic meaning is incompatible with a compositional explanation of linguistic comprehension. Recently, some philosophers of language have proposed theories of 'pragmatic' compositionality challenging this assumption. This paper takes a close look at a prominent proposal of this kind due to François Recanati. The objective is to give a plausible formulation of the view. The major results are threefold. First, a basic distinction that contextualists make between mandatory and optional pragmatic processes needs to be revised. Second, the pragmatic theory can withstand a Davidsonian objection only by rejecting the importance of a distinction between primitive and non-primitive semantic items. Thirdly, however, the theory is now open to a worry about how it should be understood: either the theory consists in a very broad functionalist generalization about communication, which makes it explanatorily inert, or it boils down to a highly particularist view about linguistic meaning. Finally, I argue that Recanati's notion of 'occasion meaning' is problematic and suggest replacing it with the notion of speaker meaning, which is explanatorily more basic